The Active Role of Consumers in the Marketing Process

The role of consumers We are all consumers Unless we go and live on a desert island we cannot avoid consuming and we all play an important role or roles in the marketing process as consumers The important thing to note is that the consumers role is not passive but active The role of the prosumer and consumer cocreation Certain aspects of consumers activities can actually contribute to production ie they play a role in making things as well as consuming them Traditionally in marketing even though one would expect the consumer to occupy a central position it was generally assumed that a product was something that was produced by the firm and offered to the customer whose role in the market was then to purchase it or not and consume it A number of writers eg Normann Ramirez 1993 now take a contrary view of the marketing process whereby products or market offerings are cocreated by the marketing process whereby the firm and the customer consumer Alvin Toffler coined the term prosumer in his book The Third Wave 1980 wherein he claimed that due to the information revolution the consumer would be more and more participate Since then largely due to the advent of mass information and customization the consumer has become part of the development production and delivery of goods and services By these means consumers cocreate and construct value for themselves Nowadays the communication process is also substantially enriched with the consumer contributing to the firms message more indirectly via social media This has led marketers to implement the idea of looking at the consumer as a coproducer whereby some or all production activities are devolved by suppliers to consumers A basic example is where some childrens toys and some for adults are deliberately designed and aimed at engaging the user and stimulating their own entertainment These might include Meccano kits which have to be constructed by the consumer and selfassembly model railways At another level the IKEA phenomenon which has been so successful is revolutionizing how people shop for furniture involves the transfer of selfservice to the shopper from the retailer including loading and delivery In addition the job of the customer also involves the assembly of the furniture from flatpack an operation that would otherwise be performed by the manufacturer EXPER IENCE Four characteristics of services are usually given intangibility as opposed to tangibility of physical goods perishability cannot be stored and heterogeneity hard to standardize it is the fourth characteristic inseparability or simultaneity that more distinctly captures the essence of services It states that services are partly produced and marketed at the same time by the same people that the customer is partly involved in the production and delivery process and that the customer partly consumes the service during its production Gummesson 2000 The consumers role as partworker however is not confined to the realm of tangible consumption The recent public obsession with reality television whereby the audience are not only invited to vicariously view the unfolding events but the audience are not only invited to vicariously view the unfolding events but the audience is also actively encouraged to determine the outcome and fate of the victims through telephone voting is a further example of consumer involvement in the production process of their own and others socalled entertainment Some marketing activities have to be prosumed in the sense that they have to be produced and consumed at the same time together and the consumer is therefore involved in their production This is the case notably for most services which are characterized by inseparability of production exchange and consumption For services such as airlines hairdressers and restaurants the interaction between the frontline staff and the customer directly affects the perceived quality of service the service experience can be enhanced not only by the service provider performing well but also by customerinput factors such as their knowledge effort and attention For advanced economies services now constitute far more value of national output than manufactured products Vargo and Lusch 2004 proposed a new dominant logic for marketing based on a servicecentred perspective Their key propositions include all economies are service economies the enterprise can only make value propositions and the customer is always the coproducer This involves a shift in emphasis from a goodscentred logic based on tangible resources embedded value and exchange transactions to one that focuses on intangible resources relationships between buyers and sellers and the cocreation of value The notion of consumer cocreation is not new however Forty years ago von Hippel 1978 identified customers as lead innovators and many innovative firms actively look to consumers as the creative source for new products The games industry is a good example where enthusiastic players of board games and computer games generate many ideas for new versions Similarly bloggers and vloggers have become the focus for users of various consumer products to articulate suggestions for improvements and completely new ideas see Moving Space Social media marketing In their seminal paper Cova and Dalli 2009 describe consumers who cocreate value for firms as working consumers whether or not they are aware of being workers As such they are not merely recipients or even arbiters of value but members or partners in the production system In other words these firms use consumers as a resource in a way that is very far removed from the traditional conceptualization of the valuecreation process in marketing theory Working consumers play an important role as producers by providing a resource for firms like labour or finance except the factor of production that they contribute is consumer capital This is similar to the way in which Baudrillard 1970 regards consumption not as the conventional mirror opposite production but as an integrated part of the production process and thus consumers as indistinguishable from workers Cova and Dalli 2009 themselves adopt a critical stance in the conclusion of this phenomenon They point out that working consumers increase the value of goods and services and companies capture this value on the market but almost none of this value is returned to consumers Given that consumers contribute to companies profits through the value of their coproduction they ask the following searing questions about the distribution of this value 1 Why do they not consider the disparity in the distribution of profits arising from consumers work 2 Why do they not receive any economic reward for their labour 3 Why are the economic benefits of their production still in the hands of producing companies 4 If consumers produce goods and services why do they have to pay to purchase them Cova Dalli 2009 326 For firms that benefit from having working consumers engaged in the production process the term consumer lifetime value refers not to value created for consumers but to the value the customers create for the firm Saren Tzokas 1998 Furthermore as Zwick Cayla 2011 observe the more consumers are involved in coproduction and design the more they are willing to pay for the products In this sense they argue that there is a double exploitation of working consumers Collaborative consumption and sharing There are however other types of working consumers engaged in cocreation who are not exploited by commercial organizations These consumers engage in various forms of collaborative consumption with other consumers not for regular businesses or companies These types of consumerproducer networks are one feature of the socalled sharing economy In these cases they are sharing with other consumers loosely formed often internetconnected peertopeer P2P or consumertoconsumer C2C collaborative networks The rise of various forms of accessbased sharing or collaborative consumption has shifted the focus of consumption from ownership to access and altered the way that value is created by and delivered to customers Bardhi Eckhardt 2012 Botsman Rogers 2010 Belk 2010 Barnes Mattsson 2017 Market exchange through consumers collaborating or sharing does not fit neatly into any of the prior categories of marketbased exchange It is not exactly a transactional market exchange nor a gift exchange and not only a relational exchange it is partly all of these types The conceptual issues in sharing and collaborative consumption has been explored most thoroughly by Belk 2007 2010 whose categorization and definitions on this subject are widely cited by other researchers and authors in marketing Belk adopts a particular standpoint in conceptualizing and studying this subject as a consumption phenomenon There is also however a consumer coproduction aspect to most forms of collaboration between consumers even where they also involve some provider input An alternative approach was adopted by Benkler 2004 who approaches sharing from a production perspective He proposed sharing as an alternative economic production system that has been enhanced by new digital networking and communication technologies This form of social production is conducted and controlled by consumers as opposed to being organized by the market the firm or the state Scaraboto 2015 views collaborative consumption as an alternative microeconomy created by the efforts of interdependent participants who switch between the roles of consumer and producer as they engage in collective value creation by means of common social and economic activities Such schemes apply most easily to shareable goods that have specific characteristics which enable and encourage common ownership according to Lamberton 2016 This applies even more widely to most types of services where private ownership of a service is not itself transferable and as Lovelock 2004 emphasizes nonownership is a core characteristic of services This feature of nonownership portrays the basis for socalled access rights consumption which Rifkin 2000 argues more accurately portrays the sharing economy than the right to use The passengers of Uber taxis only access the right to ride in the car the right to use the car remains with the owner Although studies of consumer practices of collaboration sharing and common ownership and access rights are at an early stage some authors are already arguing that these trends indicate that the private property system is weakening Much of the consumer research so far has focused on collaborative sharing of taxi and hotel services usually Uber and Airbnb Bardhi Eckhardt 2012 Hellwig et al 2015 These demonstrate another important implication of collaborative consumption of these types that the distinction between production and consumption has been overturned as consumers can also be providers and providers can become consumers at various times Furthermore in these examples the needs of both owner and consumers can be fulfilled more efficiently usage of cars and hotel rooms can be benefit and unnecessary idle usage and waste of productive resources can be reduced Consumer identity There are various ways in which consumption is related to identity for consumers First there is the economic and social identity which everyone has as a consumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sum er in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace First there is the economic and social identity which everyone has as a consumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying sumer in the marketplace When considering making purchases then buying for status symbols among the newly emerging affluent middle class in the nineteenth century Laermans 1993 Creating identity the case of tattoos One popular form of body adornment which has a long and welldocumented history is that of tattooing Perhaps as a consequence of celebrity role models sporting tattoos and shifts in fashion towards body adornment including body piercing and tattooing acquiring a tattoo is now seen as part of contemporary popular culture and it is a global multibillion pound industry DeMello 2000 However it is a global multibillion pound industry DeMello 2000 However it is a global multibillion pound industry DeMello 2000 Ethnographic studies of consumer cultures The roots of ethnography lie in cultural anthropology with its focus on smallscale societies and the original central concept remains paramount today that is a concern with the nature construction and maintenance of culture Ethnographers aim to look beyond what people say to understand the shared system of meanings we call culture Pettigrew 2000 argues that consumption represents a phenomenon that can be effectively addressed with the use of ethnographic techniques based on the understanding that the social meanings found in material possessions can be viewed as cultural communicators Warde 2005 notes that the wider practices in which the consumption process is integrated have often been ignored by consumer researchers He argues that this is an important omission because people consume products and services in order to support the particular conventions of the practice in which they are engaged such as eating skiing motoring etc The similarities and differences between people in terms of their possessions and consumer behaviour can be seen less as an outcome of personal choice and more as an outcome of the way in which the practice is organized in their culture Beyond sites of resistance subcultures are also a form of consumer culture at the micro level They are responsible for the creation of micromarkets and the products and services to meet these demands They have opinion leaders innovators and imitators of the latest trends in specialized clothing jewellery and accessories Examples of contemporary subcultural groupings include heavymetal music fans gay consumers motorcycle gangs white river rafters skydivers Star Trek followers the rave music scene Goths surfers freerunners etc Tribes take the form of consumer tribes when members are emotionally connected by similar consumption values and usage using the social linking value of products and services to create a community and express identity This is often the case as societies become more consumer orientated However tribes are different from brand communities which are formed around a particular brand or product these are explicitly commercial whereas pure tribes are not Brand communities are concerned about the relationship between brand and consumer whereas tribes focus on the relationship between consumers There are different levels of commitment which reflect the individuals identity People can escape from their everyday life For example the subculture enables the bank manager during the week to become a biker at the weekend Consumption as performance In a groundbreaking article Deighton 1992 pointed out that the word performance often occurs in accounts of consumption but is seldom brought into the foreground of the discussion on analysis He gives examples of several different types of uses Implications of viewing consumption as performance 1 The role of place space and time in consumer experience is reconceptualized and adds depth to our understanding of temporally and spatially situated consumption see Moving Space Consumer satisfaction Satisfaction is closely related to the consumption performance and in a sense follows on from it Following purchase of the product service or event the customer will normally evaluate its performance in some way unless they are completely nonjudgmental In traditional marketing this is what determines the customers satisfaction or not Most of the theory and measures of customer satisfaction come from services marketing including the famous SERVQUAL scale for rating service quality This employs a comparison of customer expectations of service performance with their evaluation of its actual performance to indicate confirmation or disconfirmation of expectations It is this level of disconfirmation of expectations that is taken as the measure of quality andor satisfaction SERVQUAL rating scale technique for measuring service quality A multipleitem scale that measures customers perceptions and expectations so that the size of the gaps can be identified Based on five criteria reliability responsiveness courtesy competence and tangibles Respondents indicate the extent of their agreementdisagreement to a series of statements according to a numerical scale typically a 15 or 17 Likert scale Parasuraman et al 1985 Despite its roots in service quality it should be noted that the concept of satisfaction is not exactly the same as quality Strictly quality is an attribute of the productservice performance and satisfaction is the customers perceived gratification from their experience of it The similarity nowadays of the measures of productservice quality and customer satisfaction has compounded the difficulty in distinguishing the two concepts especially since the two are often used interchangeably For example Holbrook 1999 writes One admires some object or prizes some experience for its capacity to accomplish some goal or perform some function Such a utilitarian emphasis on the appreciation of instrumentality relates closely to the concept of satisfaction based on comparison of performance with expectations and appears to constitute the essence of what we mean by quality A further confusion is that both quality and satisfaction are related to loyalty and sometimes used synonymously with value see Marketing Contexts Marketing values Another complexity which is noted by Oliver 1997 is that quality is an input to value but quality is also an input to satisfaction through customers comparison of performance to expected quality standards The essential problem is that all these terms are related to each other and embedded in a web of consumption constructs Although consumers may accurately be described as satisfied or dissatisfied with a product or company performance there is considerable confusion as to the meaning and multiple uses of this and related concepts The use of the term consumer satisfaction therefore should always be treated with caution and in particular the measures employed should be scrutinized carefully in order to reveal exactly what the customer is being asked to evaluate Even when the customers rating is broken down into key components their rating of say how satisfied are you with the delivery service may be based on various interpretations of satisfactory delivery in terms of different elements of the process andor outcome which may not be apparent in the questionnaire results such as ontime delivery early delivery order completeness staff help ease of packaging etc One of the key points to remember is that both quality and satisfaction are personal judgments about things events and feelings Because often it is different actors in the product and consumption performance that are making the evaluation it is quite possible for the quality ranking of a product or service to diverge significantly from customer satisfaction ratings for example in the case of highquality dishwasher which nevertheless does not meet the consumers expectations vs requirements not their aesthetic appreciation Equally I am satisfied with the performance of my mediumquality personal computer which is perfectly adequate for my use of it and indeed for my ability to use it An MBA programme may not be rated as high quality but students are very satisfied with it These differences are partly due to the fact that quality can be ascribed to a product or service by both producers and consumers whereas consumer satisfaction is entirely subjective and evaluated by consumers alone Disadvantaged consumers Along with the rise of consumerism in todays societies there has been a shift away from values of community and integrity towards those of materialism and competition This has been problematic for society as a whole since some people are better equipped to thrive in these conditions and the voice of the customer is louder for some consumers than others Even in the USA and Europe there are many people who are unable to fully participate in the consumer society because they have little discretionary spending or choice Some of this is due to low incomes however consumer disadvantages may take several forms including lack of access to markets information and education availability of finance exploitative practices of business and other personal factors such as immobility or illness Marketplace exclusion might flow from factors linked to deprivation including poor educational levels poor levels of communication and support in the home and poor access to jobs and levels of credit It can also result from the activities of retailers marketers and cultural intermediaries in advertising broadcasting and social media who shape the messages and measures of success and belonging in terms of the market The problems faced by poor consumers go beyond the resource scarcity and meagre consumption opportunities From his extensive studies of the poor and the wider culture of poverty in which they are said to exist Hill 1991 2002 found that their plight is exacerbated by living in an inescapable consumer culture For example social and mass media aid all too effectively communicate the standards and opportunities for material accumulation in society through television and media celebrity images and social media For poorer consumers however this only highlights the vivid contrast between their conditions of relative disadvantage and the consumer abundance that surrounds them Not only are they materially deprived but they are also unable to fully participate in the socalled semiotic democracy that Fiske 1987 suggested is provided by television and other mass communications A further cause for concern regarding disadvantaged consumers is that participation in the market and the accompanying rights and responsibilities that allow individuals to be valued as legitimate consumers is an essential aspect of social cohesion and social relations Consumers who are unable to fully participate in consumer choice are also potentially further handicapped by their exclusion from the symbolic and cultural aspects of consumption Of course marketing itself cannot liberate all consumers from such deprivations Many of these problems have wider public policy implications As we have seen earlier in this chapter the importance of consumption in the process of identity selfesteem and connectedness to other consumers and therefore the daily activities of the marketing profession affect individuals sense of wellbeing in these respects Marketers can attempt to alleviate some of the disadvantages faced by the worseoff consumers even in small practical ways by means of policies such as more economical quantities and packaging advice on economical uses encouragement of healthy eating by retailers At a strategic level marketers can adopt policies of corporate social responsibility the triple bottom line social marketing business ethics and consumer education policies see Marketing contexts Marketing values